9 Questions - Jordan van Bergen
As personal experiences are one of the best research sources, I’ve made a new segment called 9 Questions. In this segment I’ll try to pick out people with different perspectives and positions in the field of charities and internet. Jordan van Bergen, chairman of the GeefGratis* foundation, was the first to answer nine of my questions.
* GeefGratis means GiveFree
1. Can you give a quick introduction of yourself?
My name is Jordan van Bergen, chairman of the GeefGratis foundation. I’m 35 years old and like all other volunteers I work for free for the GeefGratis foundation. In my working hours I’m an internet consultant for a big computer and hardware company.
2. Why was the GeefGratis foundation brought to life?
We saw too many internet portals for charities asking subscription fees. We thought it was necessary to give free internet services to charities big and small and with or without a “KEURMERK”. As a charity you want to present yourself on the internet on as many sites as possible but it’s stupid of course to have to pay for each portal.
3. What are the main goals of geefgratis.nl and allegoededoelen.nl?
Goal of the GeefGratis foundation (geefgratis.nl) is free internet services for all charities in the Netherlands including a free to use donation module. The main goal of allegoededoelen.nl is giving charities the possibility to present themselves to possible givers in the Netherlands and letting them donate directly using the allegoededoelen.nl website or from the website of the charity itself.
4. What was the most difficult problem you had to overcome?
Finding a payment service provider willing to give a charity subscription fee and minimizing the transaction costs at many third parties.
5. What do you see as the biggest challenge in the future?
The biggest challenge is explaining the small charities how to use the donation module in such a way that they will raise money using it. Still the charities known by the public get the most donation money but if you are small and clever you should also be able to get donation money using our services.
6. Do you have a big community with these websites? If so, what made the community?
The community is basically the (for free) subscribed charities. We communicate a lot with them and they give us lot’s of feedback about our services. We don’t have a real link with the people that actually give.
7. What are the key factors that made your websites a success in your
opinion?
The possibility for a charity to get donation money using their own website or the allegoededoelen.nl portal website.
8. How do you think we can give all the really small charities a platform?
We already did, giving free internet services and an easy to use system as a lot of people within the smaller charities don’t know how the internet works or how to use the services we provide.
9. Thank you for your time, is there anything else you think is important to mention?
The GeefGratis foundation is against registration systems for people on the internet as these can be misused by the marketing companies on the internet. With marketing companies we also mean the charities we provide with free internet services. Every organisation wants to have as much information as possible from their donating people but we only provide the basic stuff as we don’t want to see people being mailed/phoned/etc. by a lot of charities. More and more people don’t like the mass mailings they get from charities.
This was the first of a series of 9 Questions. I’d like to thank Jordan for taking the time and effort to answer the questions.